Human rights protections raise new questions for freedom of speech

David Bromwich, the incisive American scholar, says free speech has always been an aberration. What a daring thing to say about a basic right that elicits knee-jerk deference. It's a good thing he's free to say it. He claims it existed mainly in a small historical window between the rise of Puritanism and perhaps the Rushdie affair: about 400 years, and it's now in decline.